Drug Offences Sentencing Snapshots and Statistical Reports Released
The Sentencing Advisory Council has released eight Sentencing Snapshots and two Statistical Reports on sentencing trends for drug offences in the Magistrates’ Court of Victoria from July 2004 to June 2008.
The two Statistical Reports compare sentencing trends in the Magistrates’ Court for different drug types for possessing a drug of dependence and trafficking a drug of dependence.
The eight Snapshots examine four different categories of drugs: amphetamines, cannabis, ecstasy and heroin. They include previously unpublished statistics on sentencing outcomes as well as the age and gender of people sentenced for each of the offences.
The data in these reports indicate that:
- Over the four-year period 5,147 people were sentenced for drug possession in the Magistrates’ Court and 3,714 people were sentenced for drug trafficking. The most common drug involved for both possession and trafficking was cannabis.
- During the four-year period there was a 43% drop in the number of people sentenced for heroin possession. Other drug categories remained relatively stable.
- People sentenced for possession of heroin tended to receive more severe sentence types, with 17.0% receiving some form of custodial sentence. Only 1.8% of people sentenced for possession of cannabis received a custodial outcome.
- During the four-year period there was a 57% drop in the number of people sentenced for heroin trafficking and a 24% drop in the number of people sentenced for cannabis trafficking. Over the same period there was a 28% rise in the number of people sentenced for amphetamines trafficking.
- People sentenced for trafficking heroin were more likely to receive a custodial sentence (73% of all sentences for this offence). People sentenced for trafficking ecstasy were among the least likely to receive a custodial sentence (40.7% of all sentences for this offence).
- Overall, the percentage of people who received a custodial sentence for trafficking a drug of dependence was much higher than for those sentenced for possessing a drug of dependence.
A Sentencing Snapshot using data from the higher courts on trafficking in a non-commercial quantity of drugs was released in March 2008.